Andrew Cuomo: ‘We can’t let this vaccination plan go forward the way the Trump administration is designing it’

“It’s good news, bad news,” Cuomo added. “The good news is that the Pfizer tests look good, and we’ll have a vaccine shortly. The bad news is that it’s about two months before Joe Biden takes over, and that means this administration is going to be implementing a vaccine plan. The vaccine plan is very important. And it’s probably the most ambitious undertaking since COVID began.”

Pfizer and BioNTech announced early Monday that one of its vaccine candidates was more than 90% effective at preventing COVID-19.

“Today is a great day for science and humanity,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said. “The first set of results from our phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial provides the initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent COVID-19.”

But Cuomo pointed to the challenges of rolling out increased testing across the nation, saying Trump’s vaccine plan will follow a similarly flawed approach.

“Just to put it in focus, we did 120 million COVID tests in this nation over seven months, scrambling, doing everything we can,” Cuomo said. “We now have to do 330 million vaccinations, maybe twice. My state does more testing than any state in the United States. We did 12 million tests. We have to do 20 million vaccines. And the Trump administration is rolling out the vaccination plan, and I believe it’s flawed.”

“I believe it learns nothing from the past,” Cuomo continued. “They’re basically going to have the private providers do it, and that’s going to leave out all sorts of communities that were left out the first time when COVID ravaged them.”

Cuomo said that Biden will enter office more ready to take on the pandemic, something Trump couldn’t do because he “denied” there was a problem.

“The Trump administration denied COVID, so they were never ready for it. There was no mobilization of the government,” Cuomo said. “And they’re still doing the same thing. They’re going to take this vaccine, and they’re going to go through the private mechanism: through hospitals, through drug market chains, etc. That’s going to be slow, and that’s going to bypass the communities that we call healthcare deserts.”

“If you don’t have a Rite Aide or a CVS, then you’re in trouble,” Cuomo said. “And that’s what happened the first time with COVID. Why do we have such a disparity in the infection rate and the mortality rate in COVID? Because some communities don’t have the same access to healthcare. I’m sure the Biden administration is going to address that. I think his first step saying let’s focus on the science, let’s depoliticize testing data, listen to the science, is the exact opposite as Trump.”

Cuomo said that despite the political difficulties, a Biden administration should push for a national mask mandate.

“You isolate people who have a virus,” Cuomo said. “You do the testing, you follow the data, and you put in restrictions, and government has to step up. You need a national mask mandate, and when you see the virus starting to flare up — we call them microclusters — we do so much testing that we can see it in a neighborhood. Then, you bring in restrictions to close down activity in that neighborhood.”

“I understand that, politically, it’s difficult, but that’s what you have to do,” Cuomo continued. “You see a little flame, you stamp it out, and we’re doing that all across the state.”